Chunking

What it is

Working memory holds only a few items at once, and grouping items into a unit lets one slot carry more. A phone number read as three groups is easier to hold than ten separate digits. Daniel Levitin's The Organized Mind applies the idea to everyday attention and memory.

In effect

In the article on why jingles stick, a short tune is pictured as one small unit that the mind can hold and replay whole.

What it does not say

It is a general account of memory capacity and not a measured finding about tunes. Applying it to jingles is a way of picturing the idea and not the result of a study on jingles.

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